Theme: did slavery cause the Civil War? In 1860, perhaps three out of four white Americans would have preferred to see agitation over the slavery issue cease. If many Americans simply wanted to see the question put to rest, in what sense can it be said that slavery caused the Civil War? We will explore three underlying causes of the Civil War: (1) the creation of the abolitionist movement and their counter by the "fire eaters" of the South (2) the Mexican War and the creation of the problem of slavery in the federal territories  (3) the demise of the Whig Party, the splintering of the Democratic Party, and the rise of the Republican Party.  These three themes will help us answer the questions of how white Northern and Southerners came to believe they lived in fundamentally different societies, one based on free labor, the other on slave labor, and came to imagine that the other society threatened their freedom; and how the breakdown of the Second Party System (Whigs v. Democrats) in the mid 1850s, and the emergence of a new sectional party (the Republicans) gradually eroded all ability to fashion compromises on the issue of slavery. Finally, we will see how the seizure and settlement of territory west of the Mississippi River forced the federal government to confront the issue of slavery rather than leave it merely a matter of local (state) concern, as many white Americans might have preferred.

Prologue: Two Stories of Violence: Alton, Illinois, 1837 & Christiana, Pennsylvania, 1851

  I. The Abolitionist Movement
       A. the era's most radical reform
       B. William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and the Grimke sisters
       C. immediatism and moral; suasion
       D. abolitonism a spent force by the mid-1840s
       E. what abolitioonism accomplished
       F. the southern reaction

 II. Territorial Expansion and the Mexican War
        A. in the 1830s and 1840s, most white Americans didn't worry about slavery
        B. rather, they sought opportunity in the west      
        C. Manifest Destiny: Texas and Mexico    
        D. How to solve the problem of slavery in the new federal territories:. Free Soil: Wilmot Proviso and Popular Sovereignty
        E.  Compromise of 1850
        F.  Kansas-nebraska Bill 1854

III.  Political Realignment
        A. Demise of the Whig Party
        B.  Shattering of the Democratic Party
        C.  Rise of the Republican Party: Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men

IV. Aftermath: The Politics of Desperation, 1854-1856

        A. Bleeding Kansas and the Sack of Lawrence
        B. Preston Brooks attacks Charles Sumner
        C. John C. Fremont and the Election of 1856
        D. "Slave Power Conspiracy" v. "Black Abolitionists"